Stop users from adding bullets or page breaks into paragraph fields?

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ScienceInPublic

Asked on March 24, 2015 at 03:51 AM

Hi

I'm trying to figure out how to stop users from adding line breaks/bullet points into certain paragraph fields on the form.

My form has over 100 fields. The fields are currently set up as plain text, but users are pasting the bullet characters in with their answers (from Word, I assume).

I thought data validation could be one way to stop users for using bullet symbols or line breaks. However, if you have other suggestions I'd be keen to hear.

(Note: I know I could edit out the line breaks/bullet symbols in excel, but I'm trying very hard to avoid this.)

I presume that this is Text Area (under Form Tools) that is being used?

Could you give us the link to the form where this is added so that we can take a look at the field type being used and the submissions to see more about what the issue is.

Since the bullets are actually text characters I believe that validation would not work as it would allow them, but you would be able to strip the bullets down by downloading the full source code of your jotform and modifying it to strip this for you.

This would however require you to hire a developer to do this for you.

Once we see the jotform in question and the field/widget used, we might be able to offer an alternative.

Also, could you please tell us what do you mean by adding page breaks? Do you mean new lines?

Unfortunately, I believe you can't prevent page breaks for the Text Area field.

But you can try enabling the validation option if your Textarea field, you can follow the steps below.

1. Click the "Textarea" field and in editor mode switch it to plain text.

2. In its properties, choose the validation for AlphaNumeric to allow only numbers and alphabetic characters.

I'm not sure though if this will strip the bullets though, but it will prevent your users to enter special characters.

For the page breaks, I believe we can't prevent the users to do this, this is not part of the validation, unless you use the form's full source code and create a Javascript function to prevent this kind of actions and special characters as mentioned by my colleague, here's an example shared by other users.